O Mensch Be= |weine deine | Sünde gros auf. |
2 Clavier der Co= |rahll gecollorirett |
M. W.C.B. M. ||
den 5 April |
Aō 1628
Lübbenau Tablature LyB3
(Danzig or Stockholm?, ca 1620s)
The tune upon which this piece is based, now called ‘Old 113th’ by English speakers, is of great importance in the history of modern hymnody. It was originally written around 1525 at Straßburg for a German metrical version of Psalm 119. It subsequently entered and influenced both the Lutheran and Calvinist streams of congregational music, coming into the English-
speaking world (in which the tune was shortened to its present six-
line form in the eighteenth century) through the latter; its broad lines, restriction to two note values, and general avoidance of large intervals helped to establish the style of melody eventually used in the complete Genevan Psalter. The tune has supported not only the aforementioned paraphrase of Psalm 119 and Isaac Watts’s version of Psalm 146, the 113th Psalm of the tune name, and Calvin’s own version of Psalm 36, but also the Lutheran Passiontide hymn ‘O Mensch, bewein’ dein’ Sünde groß’ (O Man, bewail thy great sin).
The present setting comes from a set of tablature manuscripts of seventeenth-
century North German provenance, with the composer of the work identified only by the initials M.W.C.B.M. As the inscription says, it is written for two manuals, with the chant ‘colored’ or decorated; that is, after the accompanying voices enter one by one, quoting the opening motif of the tune, the melody is heard entire in the treble, with its pitches sounding on the correct beats but with many faster ornamental figures sounding in between.
The piece is hardly a first-
rate example of coloratura writing; the figuration is rather formulaic. The accompaniment, too, lacks luster: it ranges from two to four voices (though it should be said that the appearance and disappearance of voices is handled relatively smoothly); two four-
voice F-
major triads in close position right at the bottom of the (F) compass seem clumsy, and in fact all the four-
voice triads (which I simplified in the present recording) exist only in order to include (unnecessarily, I think) the third of the chord; and the accompaniment as a whole eschews any figural interplay with the solo voice. Futhermore, the composer takes little advantage of the two-
manual disposition in terms of allowing solo and accompaniment to cross, either synchronically or, for the most part, diachronically, leaving the accompaniment to feel rather stuck in place and no doubt limiting the possibilities for part-
writing.
Nevertheless the work is likely an instructive example of average composition of this sort from this time and place, and its dating in the manuscript provides a critical piece of information. If unworthy of inclusion in a modern recital, it nevertheless serves the liturgy well enough on an occasion when the tune in question is to be sung.